Above photo circa 1980.

Above photo 1988, from Phillippa Hoad.

Above photo date unknown.

Above photo, circa 1946, taken by Geoffrey William Tanner.

Above sign, 1963, kindly sent by Jeremy Laws.

Above photo, date and people unknown.

Above signs 1980s. Showing a ring of spitfires flying around his head.

Above signs 1991.

With thanks from Brian Curtis www.innsignsociety.com.

Above aluminium card issued May 1949. Sign series 1 number 21.

Above photo showing  Alice Baker, her husband and daughter behind the bar. Kindly sent by Jenny Callagher.

Information from http://www.kenthistoryforum.co.uk

Thanks to the landlady, I know the tale. It was designed and built in 1939 as a sister to the "Duke Without a Head" outside Wateringbury.

Unusual in that the cellar was at first floor level and the beer drained to taps set in dummy cask heads set in the back fitting. The wife of the couple that took it on from day one was still there until about 1978. She still had some of the original glasses engraved with the pub name which a chosen few were allowed to use. (Being engraved was according to her a legal requirement during the war.) I think her name was Annie, she retired and the pub was taken over by a guy who had had the pub at Bean. He carried out masses of alterations and tried to build up a restaurant trade but it never quite took off. I think there were another couple of short term tenants then Whitbread de licensed it.

The sign is the original as far as I know, probably painted at Wateringbury Brewery. It must have been a Whitbread pub from opening as the cask heads (one of which I got when the alterations were going on were branded Whitbread and all 1938 or 39. I think the brewery banner at the top of the sine did get changed to Fremlins at one time. The Landlady's brother-in-law had the "Rising Sun" in East Malling and had the dubious distinction of being knocked over by a billygoat and stamped on resulting in his death about a week later.

In my service engineer days I used to call on both houses. Pub signs then were made of copper or aluminium sheet and the design drawn on, it was then marked out using a punch so that subsequent repaints could be done by anyone - virtually painting by numbers. The artist may well have been a John Cooke who ran the sign-writing dept about that time.

Seafordpete.

Alice Baker, the landlady for c.40 years, claimed the pub opened on the same day that war was declared in September 1939.

The "Startled Saint" was the local pub for the aircrews and ground staff stationed at RAF West Malling both during and after WW2. Amongst many famous customers, perhaps the best known was Wing Commander Guy Gibson VC who led the famous Dam Busters Raid in May 1943. The "Startled Saint" survived the closing of RAF West Malling in the 1970s but not the poor management of various licensees who ran it after Alice Baker retired.

Part of the problem was that the "Startled Saint" was remotely located, on St. Leonard's Street, about a mile SW of West Malling village.

It closed c.1990. The famous pub sign depicts St Leonard being startled by 5 low flying Spitfires buzzing his head!